element-web: Seshat DB error disables search on desktop

Description

Message search Riot can’t securely cache encrypted messages locally while running in a web browser. Use Riot Desktop for encrypted messages to appear in search results.

Message search is disabled although I’m using the riot-desktop app. This worked when the feature was introduced. I recently enabled labs settings on desktop by adding the respective file %appdata%/Riot/config.json, which is my best guess as to what might have messed things up, although my impression is that it shouldn’t have. config.json contents:

{
    "default_server_name": "myserver.url",
    "brand": "some name",
    "features": {
        "feature_font_scaling": "labs",
        "feature_pinning": "labs",
        "feature_custom_status": "labs",
        "feature_custom_tags": "labs",
        "feature_state_counters": "labs",
        "feature_many_integration_managers": "labs",
        "feature_mjolnir": "labs",
        "feature_dm_verification": "labs",
        "feature_bridge_state": "labs",
        "feature_presence_in_room_list": "labs",
        "feature_custom_themes": "labs",
        "feature_new_room_list": "labs",
        "feature_irc_ui": "labs"
    },
    "showLabsSettings": true
}

Steps to reproduce

install riot desktop
customize config.json

Logs being sent: yes

Version information

Platform: desktop

For the desktop app:

OS: Windows
Version: 1.6.6

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 6
Comments: 28 (8 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

For whoever comes here, the fix is:

Exit Element with <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>Q</kbd>
rm -Rf ~/.config/Element/EventStore
Enter Element again.

cc @joao-p-marques

+10

yajo on Dec 15, 2020

Deleting the EventStore folder is always an option. I wonder what happened to the index files that the MAC doesn’t match anymore.

poljar on Jul 2, 2020

@progserega Did you also check older names for the directories, such as Riot as well?

I try remove all:

 $ rm -Rf ~/.config/Riot/EventStore
 $ rm -Rf ~/.config/Ele/EventStore
Element/        Element (Riot)/ 
 $ rm -Rf ~/.config/Element/EventStore
 $ rm -Rf ~/.config/Element\ \(Riot\)/EventStore

not help 😦

progserega on Jan 22, 2021

Nightly had an issue which corrupted the db, the issue was caught before it went into a release.

poljar on Jan 21, 2021

@progserega Did you also check older names for the directories, such as Riot as well?

jryans on Jan 19, 2021

It was a friend, with Element just installed for the 1st time. He tried both flatpak and .deb versions, and the same happened with both.

yajo on Dec 18, 2020

@poljar What would be a good way to help people here? Maybe a toast that asks permission to delete and rebuild the index…?

jryans on Nov 20, 2020

Ah sorry, this was a direct comment for @jaywink. The db can get corrupted for other reasons as well.

poljar on Jan 21, 2021

2\. rm -Rf ~/.config/Element/EventStore

Not help for me on Element-desktop: 1.7.17 ubuntu 16.04 amd64

progserega on Jan 19, 2021

It only contains Seshat data and it will get rebuilt from the data from the server. Nothing valuable is lost.

A indexer file got somehow corrupted could be by a unclean shutdown, not sure. There’s not much to investigate here since we don’t have specific logs for this as it’s deep in the belly of Seshat. We could offer a better UI for when this happens though.

poljar on Jul 2, 2020